The importance of ventilation or the bringing in of fresh outside air into one's abode has been recognized since the beginning of civilization. That is the reason why no matter what shapes or forms one's dwelling might take, from the simplest of cabins and huts to the most sophisticated houses and mansions, it always has a number of windows, or one or more doors, whose purpose is to bring in fresh air from the outside in case of need. This simply reflects the fact that as long as people live inside an enclosed space, there will always be a buildup of various forms of airborne dirt or contamination, otherwise generally known as air pollution, that one has to get rid of or neutralize. Ventilation or the bringing in of fresh outdoor air is the most convenient way to remedy the situation as long as there are windows or doors to open. Quoting a century-old French saying, “It is dilution (through adequate ventilation) that is the best solution to pollution!”
Poor indoor air quality within a dwelling has a number of ill and serious ramifications, including fatal accidents. The buildup of poisonous Carbon Monoxide (CO) due to the malfunctioning of gas furnaces or the careless burning of combustibles indoors to get warmth, such as wood, charcoal or liquid fuel, can cost the lives of the inhabitants. An inadequately ventilated indoor space will lead over time, especially when low humidity (<60% Relative Humidity) is not maintained, to indoor air that is full of harmful substances such as mold spores and microbes, dust particles, volatile organic chemicals, airborne germs including viruses and bacteria etc. that will exacerbate the suffering of people with asthma or other respiratory diseases. Indeed, if there is more than one person living in a small enough space that is not properly ventilated, literally speaking, one is breathing other people's air from inside their bodies and vice versa. In other words, if one person has the flu or flu-like illness, the germs that he or she is exhaling into the space will not be able to readily leave the space and the probability of other persons living with him or her getting the same illness will be very much higher. The ill effects of inadequate ventilation can even be felt outside of one's home. The most well-known examples are classrooms at school, insides of school buses or even passenger cabins of airplanes. That is the reason why many people are wary about sending their off-spring to school or themselves traveling by air during the flu season.
In modern day living, with the availability of air-handling appliances such as air-conditioners and heating furnaces, good indoor air quality attained via adequate ventilation is often compromised at the expense of comfort and/or energy or money savings. An important example is the air-conditioner. Most of today's air-conditioners only deal with bringing fresh outdoor air into the conditioned space via a manually adjustable fresh air damper. Since there is no easy way today for anyone to determine how good or bad the air quality is inside an air-conditioned space due to the lack of accurate, low cost and easy to use instrumentation, the fresh air damper is seldom kept open or utilized at all. Thus, most of the time the conditioned air is simply re-circulated from and into a space. This is particularly the preferred mode of operation for one's air-conditioner when the outdoor air is hot and humid. By letting hot and humid air, even though it is fresh, into the conditioned space, one not only pays more because the air-conditioner has to be run at maximum capacity most of the time, the temperature and humidity of the conditioned air in the space may not be able to be maintained according to one's wishes. Thus, one's comfort, based upon one's preferred air temperature and humidity settings, might also have to be compromised as well.
In short, manufacturers of air-conditioners today simply do not address the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) issue. They would leave this to the users at large. Thus it is up to one to determine for oneself whether or not to open the fresh air damper in order to attain better indoor air quality but at the expense of more energy or money spent and even possibly compromising one's own comfort. A more realistic look at the currently prevailing air-conditioner dilemma is simply the non-existence of an adequate fresh air controller, preferably built into the air-conditioner unit, that is accurate, reliable, low-cost and easy to use so as to be able to automatically optimize the unit's operating conditions against air quality, comfort and energy savings according to the number of people (zero or otherwise) present in the conditioned space. It is therefore the object of the current invention to advance such a fresh air controller possessing the desirable characteristics and meeting all the functional requirements set forth above.